Amp Camp Amp

As bridged monoblocks they have the best sound ive heard to date in my system. instrument detail , stereo image in vinyl has exeeded all my expectations and the overall sound is beautifull, gives you a smile. Totaly recomend it and will buy again to build for friends

First and foremost, this is a nice little project! That being said there were a couple of small issues I ran into. First, two of the resistors were the incorrect size. I dug out some correct ones from my stash, not a big deal. Secondly, the instructions were sometimes difficult to follow. For example making the back panel power bus, I soldered it to all three terminals before reading "do not solder to speaker terminals yet". Maybe I was in a hurry, but I had to unsolder and redo that bus like 6 times. Read all the way through each section before soldering anything. I also had to redo the enclosure to heatsink mounting a few times to make sure everything fit without touching. It's entirely possible that my excitement got the best of me, and I got ahead of myself (normal occurrence). After all is said and done, this is a fun little amp. It definitely does not have the power reserves that my Yamaha M-80 has, but it can drive my Cornscala's (6 ohms) to reasonable levels, and sounds pretty good doing it! I will soon be trying the mono mode, when a friend brings his ACA over for a listening session. I have high hopes for that as well. I would definitely build another one, given the chance.

Recommended. It went by quick. I'm burning the amp in to the Grateful Dead as I write. Very surprised and pleased the sound quality, loudness, and bass. Build hints: 1) Read 1.6 (board build) and separate 1.8 (wiring only) instructions end-to-end first including helpful comments. 2) Brush up on soldering technique 3) Would be nice to get a chart listing wire count and length but plenty wire supplied. It worked first time. Easy peasy.

Just finished my two mono blocks and was totally amazed that a single ACA would easily drive a pair of large advents (~86db sensitivity) in our small music room. Absolute jaw dropper and dynamic wide sound stage. I only drive one pair of Advents, while the Sansui drives the other pair and paradigm speakers.

Genuinely, thank you all for your experiential knowledge and support...

Easy to build with a clear head and no distractions... Yes!

I bought this as a fun holiday project, and with appropriate reverence for the talents of Mr Pass, but with none for myself as I'd never soldered before. I kitted-up with a basic soldering iron and a decent multimeter and took a deep breath. Rest-assured, if you're a reasonably methodical person capable of following basic instructions, you'll be fine. Faults were easy to track down using the diagnostics supplied and first principles. Mistakes were easily remedied. Once I'd biased the channels (simple but finicky process) and checked for DC offset (almost negligible at about 3mV), I hooked the amp up to my usual Sugden IA4 running as a preamp. This being a low power amp, I was happy to be feeding it to very sensitive Klipsch Forte IIIs. I expected it to sound decent. It's way better than that, it blew me away. While it lacked the muscularity of a higher-powered amp, it had no problem driving the speakers to ear-splitting levels with real class. The midrange clarity and soundstage are lovely, really suiting quieter acoustic music. The biggest issue I noticed, is that during particularly busy sections, the amp couldn't deliver the clean and tight bass that the Sugden can - the ACA bottom-end reaches plenty-deep, but its presentation is more disorganised and smeared. Another thing to note: this amp runs hot. Very hot. It has that classic slightly warm class-A sound and the heat that comes with it. This is probably not an amp to leave on all the time.

So, is the Amp Camp Amp any good? Well, there is joy and pride to be found in building the amp yourself, but that only goes so far if it sounds bad or even just disapoointingly fine. Fear not, it's much better than that. I'm so impressed that I'm building a new desktop system around it for my workspace. I've selected Omega speakers for their ease with flea-watts... and I see those Zen Triode kits... However, ACA? I freaking love it!

I started this project being amazed by all the comments and fantastic feedback posted everywhere. I thought this is definitely something, well, I am a natural maker with very little electronics knowledge and an audiophile newby, so it could be an inexpensive way to begin this journey and it catches me deeply.

The sound signature is delicious, the only drawback is its small power, but found out thanks to James from TungstenAudio and his genius and generosity, that it is possible to hack the ACA and take it to a better level, I followed up his recommendations and wow, more power and even better sound, it reminds me the sound stage of a tube amp, very, very nice.

You can find the suggested upgrade here https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/aca-amp-with-premium-parts.328357/post-5569767

I am running a pair of Elac's Debut 6.2 (87 dB sensitivity) and they sound great.

My next step is to try a 48V linear power supply and see how it performs, if it does't give more power I will purchase another one to build a mono block set.

Thank you to Nelson Pass for his creativity and generosity and to DIY audio to make it so easy and also thanks to James from Tungsten audio for the tweeks, he really took this mini amp to another level.